Editorial: Justice for those who commit, enable crimes against kids

Wednesday

Jun 27, 2012 at 12:01 AMJun 27, 2012 at 6:55 AM

There should be a special spot in a very dark place for those who betray in the most sinful of ways the most vulnerable and trusting among us. Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State University assistant football coach, will likely spend the rest of his life in that place. He will not be alone.

There should be a special spot in a very dark place for those who betray in the most sinful of ways the most vulnerable and trusting among us. Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State University assistant football coach, will likely spend the rest of his life in that place. He will not be alone.

Sandusky, 68, was convicted last Friday on 45 of 48 counts of sexually assaulting - raping, sodomizing - 10 boys, though one wonders how many more victims there may have been. The jury came back quickly, suggesting its members had little doubt as to his guilt. Eight people testified in explicit and painful detail against him, not including one of his own adopted sons, now 33, who offered to.

It's not over for anybody, of course. Multiple lawsuits are forthcoming, and criminal investigations are ongoing as to whether a cover-up was orchestrated at Penn State. University leaders have indicated an openness to meet with victims and "privately, expeditiously and fairly address ... (their) concerns and compensate them for claims relating to the university." It is likely to be very costly, as it has proved to be for other prominent institutions once thought to be beyond reproach in America.

Indeed, on the same day as the Sandusky verdict, Monsignor William Lynn, 61, of Philadelphia became the first senior official of the Roman Catholic Church to be convicted for his role in covering up sexual abuse by priests. He now faces up to seven years in prison.

The pedophilia described in these cases is awful, though some might argue that it's a sickness over which the perpetrators may lack some control. What makes the cover-ups just as bad or worse, in some ways, is that they were committed by people who should know better, and whose inaction or wrong actions - their refusals to contact law enforcement authorities, their sometimes conscious efforts to conceal evidence, their egregious transfer of problems and predators to other assignments where they continued to have access to unwitting children - enabled the crimes to continue and the list of victims to grow. However heinous the original transgressions, the cover-ups only compound them.

In Penn State's case, university officials were made aware of Sandusky's proclivities as far back as 1998. Ironic, then, that his attorneys would complain about the swiftness of their client's trial and inadequate time to prepare, and how that might form the basis of an appeal. Obviously the trial did not happen soon enough for Sandusky's victims.

In Lynn's trial, meanwhile, a crucial piece of evidence was a list he put together for his boss at the Philadelphia Archdiocese, the late Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, in 1994 of about three dozen active priests who had been accused - credibly, in his estimation - of sexual abuse of minors. Damnably, 18 years would pass before that document would be discovered by a church attorney, reportedly in a locked safe.

There simply is no defense for that kind of behavior. The moral - and now criminal - failure is obvious. But beyond that, as has become apparent, it can backfire with an uncommon vengeance, with the impulse to cover up resulting not just in reputations tainted but utterly destroyed, with the costs in human and financial terms soaring astronomically. Some - the children - lose their innocence and sometimes much more as the nightmares follow them into adulthood. Some - Penn State's president, its late and legendary football coach Joe Paterno - lose their jobs in the wake of the scandal. And some lose their freedom.

And yet one still hears, remarkably, from those apologists who wonder why everybody just can't get over it. Because the victims don't just get over it, that's why.

Peoria, Ill., Journal Star

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